Supreme Court clears the way for Trump administration to massively reduce the size of the Department of Education

The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would require the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees who were fired earlier this year as part of the department’s efforts to reduce the size of its workforce. In a brief unsigned ruling, the justices blocked the order issued in May by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, who had concluded that the Trump administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department” even though in his view it lacked the power to do so.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in a 19-page opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor called the court’s decision “indefensible,” writing that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority,” she said, “is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

The court’s order came in a dispute that began shortly after the department’s March 11 announcement of a reduction in force involving 1,378 employees. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release that the RIF “reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

In an executive order issued nine days later, President Donald Trump instructed McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department. On March 21, he announced that programs for students with special needs and the federal student loan portfolio would be transferred from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration, respectively.

The plaintiffs – a group of 19 states led by New York, as well as the District of Columbia, two public school districts, and teachers’ unions – went to federal court in Massachusetts, arguing that the RIF violated both the Constitution and the federal laws governing administrative agencies.

On May 22, Joun barred the Trump administration from implementing the RIF announced on March 11, ordered the department to bring back any employees who had been terminated as a result of that RIF, and prohibited the government from moving the student loans and special needs programs to other agencies within the government. Joun wrote that the “massive” RIFS have “made it effectively impossible for the Department to carry out” its obligations under federal law.

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on June 6, asking the justices to intervene and put Joun’s order on hold. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer contended that Joun “is attempting to prevent” the department “from restructuring its workforce, despite lacking” the power to do so “several times over.” And more broadly, Sauer argued, Joun’s order “epitomizes many of the same errors in recent district-court injunctions usurping control of the federal workforce.”

The school districts and unions countered that “[i]f the dismantling of the Department is allowed to go forward now” “it will be effectively impossible to undo much of the damage caused.” But if the government eventually prevails, they emphasized, it can “put its plans into operation merely slightly later than otherwise.”

The states added that although the department is allowed to reduce the number of employees in its workforce “if such reduction does not prevent the Department from performing its statutory duties,” it cannot “curtail all relief to the States without identifying any alternative approach to the States’ injuries,” which include the decreased “ability of public colleges and universities to meet enrollment goals and provide academic programs” as a result of major cuts in the department staff who “review the certification and recertification of higher education institutions for federal student aid.”

Nearly one month later, the court finally acted on the Trump administration’s request, issuing a brief unsigned order that did not provide any explanation for the majority’s decision.

In her dissent, Sotomayor emphasized that, until this year, “Presidents have recognized they lack the unilateral authority to eradicate a Department that Congress has tasked with fulfilling statutory duties.” But President Donald Trump, she said, “has made clear that he intends to close the Department without Congress’s involvement.”

In its briefs at the Supreme Court, Sotomayor continued, “the Government does not defend the lawfulness of its actions” but instead “presents a grab bag of jurisdictional and remedial arguments to support its bid for emergency relief” – none of which, she said, “justifies this Court’s intervention.”

Putting Joun’s order on hold, Sotomayor contended, “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended. The majority apparently deems it more important to free the Government from paying employees it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms while the litigation continues.”